Hot Takes

Congressman Emmer stands up for cryptocurrency innovation and gets important regulatory clarification from the SEC.

In today’s hearing, Congressman Emmer (R-MN) had an excellent line of questioning for the Director of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, William Hinman, on the subject of open blockchain tokens and regulation.

Hinman responded that the initial sale of a token is difficult to have without it being security issuance. But he also said that “it is certainly possible that there are tokens that would not have the hallmarks of a security.” He went on to specify what a token that doesn’t have those hallmarks might look like: “a token where the holder is buying it for its utility rather than investment, especially if it's a decentralized network in which it’s used with no central actors.”

This is exactly the right approach. As we just wrote yesterday and have been stressing since 2015:

A decentralized token may not be a security even if the token’s initial pre-sale did fit the test for securities issuance, and

The factors that distinguish a non-security token from a security are

usefulness and

decentralization.

It’s awesome to hear the SEC’s Director of Corporation Finance testify that they are looking at these issues with a similar perspective.

It was also a treat to hear Rep. Emmer standing up for open blockchain innovation during the hearing, suggesting that the assumption—from regulators and elected officials—that decentralized networks are only used for fraud or crime is as misguided as assuming, back in the time of Columbus, that the world is flat.

As Emmer said, “People tend to fear what they don’t know. If people sailing the oceans at the time of Columbus had believed the world is flat we wouldn’t have had the great discoveries of the New World.”

As part of our work to keep cryptocurrency networks open, decentralized, and permissionless, Coin Center tracks the introduction and current status of federal legislation that mentions, or relates to, cryptocurrencies. During the first months of the 116th Congress, we have identified 11 such bills as having been introduced in either the House of Representatives or the Senate.

As a resource to those interested in public policy and the regulation of cryptocurrencies, we have decided to make our “Crypto Bills Tracker” publicly available. We will be periodically updating it as bills are introduced and move through the legislative process, and hope it will serve as a useful resource for the cryptocurrency community.

A few months ago LabCFTC, the division of the agency dealing with innovative financial products, put out a request for information to better understand the Ethereum network and ecosystem that has developed around it. We have submitted a formal comment explaining what Ethereum is and how it works relative to other public blockchain networks like Bitcoin. Issues covered include smart contracts, consensus mechanisms (current and planned), governance, etc.

The cryptocurrency policy briefing from Coin Center.

Earlier today, Coin Center hosted a briefing in Congress in conjunction with the Congressional Blockchain Caucus. We covered the basics of cryptocurrency, why it’s exciting, and went through some the policy issues the technology raises, including questions of scaling, privacy, consumer protection, and tax.

One of the things made uniquely possible by cryptocurrency is microtransactions--tiny transactions without a middleman. To visualize this concept, we used a lightning enabled candy dispenser. We were able to show the process of sending tiny amounts of bitcoin from our phones to the vending machine and watch it dispense candy in real time. The network fees were 1 satoshi per transaction.

Real time demonstrations like these are always better than simply describing a process. We are grateful to Swiss developer David Knezić for generously donating the dispenser to Coin Center.

The well-attended briefing was the first of many that the Congressional Blockchain Caucus plans to hold in 2019. We are excited to continue helping them and their colleagues better understand and appreciate this technology.

The result of this is that many cryptocurrency businesses are choosing to simply forgo doing business with customers in New York.

We are glad to see the New York legislature taking the step of creating a task force to better evaluate the cryptocurrency landscape and its own regulatory stance toward the technology, which is well overdue. As Assemblyman Clyde Vanel noted, “It has been nearly four years since the implementation of the BitLicense. In the cryptocurrency space and technology in general, a few months is equivalent to years.”

We look forward engaging with the task force on this important mission.

A bill that would clarify securities law for tokens and improve the tax treatment of cryptocurrencies was just introduced in Congress.

Today, Reps. Warren Davidson and Darren Soto introduced the Token Taxonomy Act, which includes several common-sense changes to federal law.

First, the bill would amend the definition of “security” in the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to exclude decentralized cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, thereby making clear that such cryptocurrencies are not subject to the rules and regulations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. We have longargued that classifying decentralized cryptocurrencies as securities would be both impractical and harmful to innovation, a view that the SEC has, to its great credit, also recently taken. Although the SEC has put forth sensible guidance on this question, codifying that decentralized cryptocurrencies are not securities would mitigate any lingering uncertainty.

The bill would also make several changes to the tax treatment of cryptocurrencies. One such change that we have long argued for is a de minimis exemption for cryptocurrency transactions for goods and services. Today, if you buy a cup of coffee with bitcoins and the price of bitcoin has increased since you acquired it, you would have to calculate, report, and pay taxes on any capital gains that you realized as a result of the transaction, no matter how small they might be. The Token Taxonomy Act would create an exemption from this requirement for any gains under $600, similar to the de minimis exemption that foreign currency transactions enjoy today, which we think is a simple and fair way to avoid unfairly discouraging the use of cryptocurrency as a means of payment.

We are happy to see continued action from Congress to implement common-sense clarifications and adjustments to the regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies. We are looking forward to continued engagement with policymakers on these issues to ensure that the fruits of cryptocurrency innovation are not lost to ill-considered policy.

It is great to see cryptocurrency industry participants increasingly work together to improve their standards and build an orderly cryptocurrency ecosystem. We are looking forward to working with both organizations.

Based in Washington, D.C., Coin Center is the leading non-profit research and advocacy center focused on the public policy issues facing cryptocurrency and decentralized computing technologies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Our mission is to build a better understanding of these technologies and to promote a regulatory climate that preserves the freedom to innovate using permissionless blockchain technologies.